I recently became aware of GNUstep and have been trying to learn more about it. I was wondering if you could clear up a few things that are not totally clear? If my questions are in the wrong group, please direct me to the appropriate group. If I have included too many questions in a single posting, I apologize. 1) Does GNUstep follow the "write once, run many" philosophy of JAVA? Would a separate compilation be required for every platform which an author wishes to support? Is GNUstep 100% interpreted, 100% compiled, or a hybrid of the two? Does GNUstep exhibit any similarities to JAVA, where the source code may be easily reconstructed due to its being an interpreted environment? 2) I understand that GNUstep falls under the GNU LGPL. (reference #1 below) It's my understanding that this allows an author to create "non-free" applications where the author is not required to provide the application source code. I have also seen an article (reference #3 below) which explains how an application may be distributed to Windows users without requiring the user to first install GNUstep. While JAVA applications do require that JAVA be previously installed, most Windows applications are standalone. If an author created an application and packaged it as standalone, including only the necessary GNUstep .dll files to make it work, would this be allowed under the LGPL? It would seem that if the author did not modify any of the GNUstep software, that providing the source code would not be necessary as it is freely available elsewhere. Would it be sufficient to simply provide one or more URLs where the GNUstep source code could be downloaded? 3) According to reference #2 below, if you distribute a library under the LGPL, you have to distribute the source. Since I only recently discovered GNUstep, I have not yet found any sources associated with the Windows installers you have at GNUstep.org. Perhaps the sources are included with the installer, but I did not see them. If they are there but I didn't see them, I apologize. My confusion is, which libraries are included in those installers so I know which sources would need to be downloaded? 4) In reference #5 there is discussion of a couple of potential problems if you package a GNUstep application as a standalone. Has there been any resolution of these issues? 5) I have heard of something called Droidstep, which is also supposed to be under the GNU LGPL. Do you know anything about this?
Thank you ============================================================== **** reference #1 "Introduction to GNUstep" (www.gnustep.org) License The GNUstep libraries are covered under the GNU Lesser (Library) Public License. This generally means you can use these libraries in any program (even non-free programs) without affecting the license of your program or any other libraries GNUstep is linked with. If you distribute the GNUstep libraries along with your program, you must make the improvements you have made to the GNUstep libraries freely available. The stand-alone tools in GNUstep are under the standard GPL. ============================================================== **** reference #2 "The LGPL and Java" by David Turner (www.gnu.org) When you distribute the library with your application (or on its own), you need to include source code for the library. But if your application instead requires users to obtain the library on their own, you don't need to provide source code for the library. ============================================================== **** reference #3 Date: 28-Feb-2007 (tested under Windows XP) Update: 06-Mar-2010 Author: Nicola Pero <[email protected]> after Richard Frith-Macdonald <[email protected]> and others This document is intended to provide a step by step instruction on how to use GNUstep on recent Windows operating systems (XP, 2000, and probably NT). It will get as far as explaining how to build a GNUstep application and create a standalone version that can be shipped standalone to Windows end users. ...... In the second part ("HOW TO SHIP YOUR GNUSTEP APPLICATION TO WINDOWS USERS"), we'll show an example of how to package (and use) the .exes, .dlls and resources (that you can build using the environment described in the first part) as Windows standalone binaries. ......... You probably want to ship your Windows application as a standalone ... that Windows users can easily download and use. ... you want to make sure you remove anything that you don't strictly need. So go in there and remove anything that you don't need. ............... ============================================================== **** reference #4 Date: 28-Feb-2007 (tested under Windows XP) Update: 06-Mar-2010 Author: Nicola Pero <[email protected]> after Richard Frith-Macdonald <[email protected]> and others ... make sure you are aware of the licenses, and that you comply with them. .......... ============================================================== **** reference #5 Date: 28-Feb-2007 (tested under Windows XP) Update: 06-Mar-2010 Author: Nicola Pero <[email protected]> after Richard Frith-Macdonald <[email protected]> and others The gdnc, gpbs processes are somehow a bit of a pain. They are automatically started when you start your application, but they are not automatically stopped when you quit it. ... Also, it's not clear what happens if you have two or three such GNUstep apps downloaded from the web and you try to run them at the same time. What about gdomap etc ? ==============================================================
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